Artisans, plebeians, and radical reform in the British Isles, New South Wales, and Upper Canada, 1790-1838

Abstract

The principle aim of this of thesis is to examine connections between popular radical movements in the British Isles, and in New South Wales and in Upper Canada, between the 1790s and 1830s. This period, the first decade of which immediately followed the American Revolution and which witnessed the French Revolution, marked the point when members of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish lower orders began to conceive of themselves as citizens deserving of political rights, and yet un-represented by the established electoral structures. The elite, meanwhile, had no intentions of relinquishing their political hegemony, and thus the struggle for parliamentary reform was under way--a contest that would extend beyond the Great Reform Bill of 1832, into the Chartist disruptions of the late 1840s. From the 1790s onwards, from one British Isles nation to the next, efforts at popular parliamentary reform--whether moral or physical force--shared numerous points in common, as well as actual connections between labouring men's radical organizations.

The values of the British Isles parliamentary reform movement also infused the activities of exile and émigré working men to New South Wales and Upper Canada, turning these distant regions into theatres in which the old struggle was fought anew. At the same time, the peculiarities of these outposts shaped the contest between popular radicals and conservatives in new ways, and the original British Isles ideology was adapted to meet these new challenges. This thesis evaluates the ways in which the British Isles popular movements of the 1790s to 1820s were linked not only from nation to nation at home, but to struggles for reform in Now South Wales in roughly the same period, and in Upper Canada in the 1820s and 1830s.